


Beautifully Unfinished

by cave_canem



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-01-17 05:41:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 11,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12358683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cave_canem/pseuds/cave_canem
Summary: Stiles, Lydia, and everything in between.Or: people prompted me, and I answered.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A collection of the prompts I got over the summer on tumblr, based on [this list of prompts](http://youaretoosmart.tumblr.com/post/161859892540/send-me-a-number-and-a-character-and-ill-write).
> 
> Title from "Beautifully Unfinished", by Ella Henderson.
> 
> Find me on tumblr at [youaretoosmart](http://youaretoosmart.tumblr.com)!

The atmosphere at their table is both icy and stifling.

Stiles isn’t sure if he should break into a cold sweat or tug off his tie; the movement of his eyes, alternating between the two opponents like in a tennis match, is enough to send his brain wiring.

He’s judging both Lydia and her father, sat across the dainty table from each other, assessing quickly the probability of snarky remarks and barely-hidden insults. Lydia’s face is a familiar mask of polite indifference, but Stiles knows her, and he knows her tells. He doesn’t look for the twitch at the corner of her mouth—that comes later, when her fury has already escalated—or a spark of anger in her eyes; he looks for the way her hands curl in her lap instead, slowly bunching up her napkin.

Lydia’s father is a tall man, which makes Stiles suspect Lydia got her tiny size from her mother, with thinning and receding hair, probably cut with expensive scissors by an expensive hairdresser. He probably has some other redeeming qualities—he did half create Lydia, after all, even if she seems to have taken more from her paternal grandmother—, but in the strained silence, it’s really all Stiles can see.

Lydia and her father have been as good as estranged for the past few years, but by some cruel twist of fate (if Stiles still believed in fate), he moved to New Jersey when they both went to the East Coast for college. Lydia usually meets her father once a year and goes alone, mostly because there have been seven hours in a car and several hundred miles separating them for the last four years. Lydia gets flustered every time the day rolls around, and he knows she’s torn between the pettiness of skipping the invite and cutting ties with her father, the remnants of her high school self-education, and the need to _try_ , at the very least.

What Stiles mostly remembers and associates with these lunches are the early Skype calls, Lydia’s hair in a towel, the bare expanse of her neck leaving nothing to the imagination; he can still see the sharp angle of her wrists as she applies her make-up, touch by touch like she’s adding the last brushes of paint on a Vermeer, the familiar gesture made foreign by the unwanted medium of his laptop. His role was to crack jokes and speak about everything and anything; read her incorrect scientific claims he found online. _Studies show_ , he’d begin, and listen to her pest and complain. Then he would open the notebook he kept in his desk drawer and try to give her a real challenge, an equation or a riddle or a problem. _Keep me distracted_ had been the official request, and so he delivered.

Now his job is essentially the same, but so many little things have changed that it blows him away; it joins plenty of other small, intimate moments, in the flow that helps the sudden realization that he’s living with Lydia, having the life he’d never thought he’d have. Now, instead of his alarm, it’s the sound of Lydia getting out of the shower that woke him up that morning (she always starts getting ready ridiculously early when she has to see her father), and he’d been able to chase the small drops of water down her pale neck as he’d dreamed to do so many times.

That also means, more concretely, that he’s sitting at the same table as the Martins do, literally acting as a buffer between the two tempers, an awkward situation if there ever was one. He feels like he can hear the tension dripping from an hypothetic faucet into an hypothetic sink, and it’s taking all of his attention not to fidget accordingly.

Lydia and her father have now moved from a simple mute disagreement to an actual staredown. Her hand is curled tight on her fork, and her meal is getting colder by the minute, so he knows there is no way she’s ever finishing it, even if Mr. Martin miraculously stops getting on her nerves (or leaves. Stiles’ not that picky).

He’s halfway through visualizing the contents of their pantry (do they have enough flour to make pancakes?) when Mr. Martin speaks.

“So you’re giving me the silent treatment now?” he says with a forced airiness that fooled no one. He looks at her like at a petulant child, and Stiles literally has to sit on his left hand to keep himself from punching that expression off his stupid face.

Lydia answers like Stiles knows she would, and quirks an eyebrow at her father, before schooling her features in her most disinterested look. She looks back at her asparagus with a blank face and has just started to lift her fork to her mouth when Mr. Martin drags his chair back loudly.

“Excuse me a minute,” he says, tugging on his sleeves. Stiles thinks it must give him the impression to look important, like he’s just concluded a deal and hasn’t been driven away to the bathroom by his twenty-two year-old genius daughter.

Lydia stares at his retreating back with a stony look. She doesn’t say anything, but Stiles sees the surprise on her face when he catches her wrist.

“You don’t want to eat that,” he says, pulling a face at the soggy vegetables.

She sighs with her entire body and drops the fork down with a clink.

“Sorry,” she says, turning her wrist over in his grasp until his fingers brush the smooth skin the little bumps of her veins. He taps his fingers in rhythm with her pulse, waiting until it’s back to its normal low tempo.

“Do you want to go?” He asks.

“No,” she says after a while, shoulders dropping. “But can you manage the conversation until dessert?’”

“Can I?” Stiles snorts. “Have you _met_ me?”

“I’m just concerned about you performing under pressure, that’s all.”

He makes an indignant noise, but doesn’t say anything, because he can see that little spark in her eyes is back. Lydia pushes her plate aside and fishes a pen from her purse, with that faraway expression on her face that says her mind is a hundred realities away. Her wrist moves slowly, tracing figures and numbers and curves in the air as they press in her mind, begging to be written into existence.

“Do you have paper?” she asks after a while, stilling her pen with the tip brushing against the tablecloth.

Stiles makes a show of patting his pockets down, just to see the corners of her mouth quirk up the way they do when she’s amused against her will, and hands her a crumpled receipt with a flourish.

She looks at it quizzically, probably judging the amount of junk food he bought and pretended to hide from her in the pantry (though he’s pretty sure he wasn’t the one to open the Skittles, and since he knows her cravings after sex, really, the evidence points toward her). The back of the receipt is soon blackened with enough numbers and letters to reinvent a language. Stiles has stopped trying to understand exactly what Lydia writes; he understand the curves of her deltas and the sharpness of the sevens; the way her zetas seem to bleed ink on the page and the roundness of her twos, traced with a steady hand.

Mr. Martin comes back at the same time as the waiter, and they busy themselves with ordering dessert, then eating it. Stiles tries to steer the conversation in the most neutral direction possible that is _not_ the weather, and Lydia’s father plays along carefully, but Lydia doesn’t speak a word. She’s stopped scribbling, though, and looks more at peace.

“Thank you,” she says abruptly as the waiter places the bill on the table. She slides the little platter toward her, glancing at the paper.

“No, let me—” Mr. Martin begins, but Lydia cuts him with a disapproving noise.

“I insist,” she says, and the conversation feels so formal that Stiles has to forcefully remind himself that it’s between a father and his daughter.

In the end, Lydia wins the silent argument, and casually hands her credit card to the waiter. Stiles knows she wanted to bother her father when she ordered one of the most expensive meal on the menu, but he thinks that the sight of her independence is far stronger of a slap for the man than a costly bill could ever be. Under the table, his knee finds hers, gently knocking his support. She presses back before they get up, and the small smile playing at her lips when they leave the restaurant looks like the brightest of promises.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **15:** “I don’t want to get up — you’re too comfy.”
> 
> **67:** “My clothes look really good on you.”

They tumble in bed like a painting.

It’s a June afternoon and everything is too slightly too hot, too sharp; the voices press in Lydia’s head and for a moment it feels like she’ll never be alone ever again. It’s not the worst that they’ve been, and her head is not yet pounding painfully, so she accepts Stiles’ inquisitive looks and his hands and his mouth, and she lets him tug her back with the living, one shiver of pleasure after another. 

It starts when they climb in his Jeep after school, with a new definition of their relationship, attached to them like a print that doesn’t wash off. They’re dating and everything feels a bit new, but at the same time so much of what makes them stays the same. Lydia pulled him back from another dimension, but all it really amounts to is that they’re each other tethers and they’re in love. 

Lydia rests her head against the window, slightly uncomfortable in the metallic heat that can only exist in cars old enough to ignore AC, and lets Stiles do the talking. He knows she’s listening even though her eyes are closed and her hair is stuck to her temples by the weather. He talks about the last lacrosse practice and Greenberg’s departure present to coach ( _the fucker’s finally graduating, so coach’s feeling a bit down. Not admitting it, though_ ), and in the same breath he asks her how’s her head doing. Lydia’s fingers twitch with the urge of reaching over, of anchoring that moment down with touch and kisses, but instead she waits until he’s pulled in his driveway to lean across the console. 

_Distract me_ , she whispers in his ear, playful just because she can, now. It’s exhilarating to hop down the car and hear him fumble with his belt, feeling lighter than she’s felt in months despite the supernatural rapping at her head like at a door. 

It’s one of those times when the whispers don’t want to exist anymore than they do, indecipherable, but won’t back down either. It’s uncomfortable but an evil she’s learnt to live with. And she is not going to relinquish one part of herself, the playful and happy part, the one she’s been searching after for so long now, to make place for another that she hasn’t chosen. She’s Lydia Martin, and she’s a study in complexities.

She tugs Stiles to the door and laughs when he tells a terrible joke in the shell of her ear, and she relish in the way his breath hits her skin, hotter than any June afternoon can ever be. They waste no time before losing themselves in each other, weaving the complex and beautiful web that is Lydia Martin and Stiles Stilinski a bit more with every kiss. 

There’s a bit of fumbling and tripping as they guide each other toward the staircase, and—Lydia’s books and her bag are still in the car, but, _oh_ , is this the moment to think about mathematics and advanced biology, Lydia?

( _Yes,_ her brain answers when she pulls away just enough to study the moles dotting his face and his shoulders like a constellation, _it always is with Stiles_ )

Stiles’ room is blessedly cool because of the blinds he didn’t open that morning, and so what if Stiles picks up on the fact that her sigh upon entering the room isn’t entirely due to the suppleness of his lips? They strip down quickly because it’s hot and because they want each other; the moment all boils down to the fact that yes, they _can_ have each other. 

She's forgotten all about the voices when she takes in the nakedness and the moles and the way the light brushes colors on them that exist nowhere else than there and now. 

He invites her on the bed with an exaggerated gesture and a bow, and she sits like a princess, sure of the reflexion of herself she sees in his eyes. He jumps after her and the moment becomes another, fun and loud as she laughs quietly and he peppers her thighs with kisses. 

Stiles laughs his way through the minutes as he used to do before everything happened and life pushed that knowledge of him onto her. This isn’t an afternoon for bitterness, though, and she banishes the thought away, losing herself in her body as she’s done so many times before. It’s different, now, of course; it’s better, and she’s the one surrendering control, sighing and moaning softly, in a fit of honesty she hasn’t always allowed herself before. 

They move slowly but surely, with not-quite-controlled movements that end up with Lydia’s slick palms sliding on the headboard and one of Stiles’ feet smacking on the floor for balance on his too-small bed. Her hair his a tangled mess on the pillows, some of it stuck under Stiles’ hand in the covers, with a painful potential if he slips, but she looks up at his face, his eyes that never stay closed long, and she thinks in colors. She turns her head slightly to reach his neck, the sensitive spot at the juncture with his shoulder, glancing at the bare skin on his back, the length of his limbs and way hers fit around his frame; she thinks of Greek sculptors and a golden ratio that sciences and art all claim. 

The low yellow light flows through the blinds and settles on their skin like golden dust, sprinkling the sheets and the pillows with scattered brushes of color. There’s a feeling of soft languor in the air when they lie next to each other, and Lydia can feel it in every movement they make, in the barely perceptible way Stiles’ chest rises and falls; in the slight shift of the sheet against her nipples, her hips; in the smooth run of her hair falling across her shoulders. It’s in the burn of her thighs and the stretch of her arms when she brushes her knuckles against Stiles’ ribs, and the flutter of his long lashes on his face.

Stiles sighs as she makes to get up ( _I don’t want to get up—you’re too comfy_ , he mumbles in her skin, but Lydia dances around his outstretched arms until he nearly rolls on the floor), and he takes her hand when she leads them across the hallway to the bathroom. They turn on tepid water because they’re simply too hot for the usual comfort of a post-sex scalding shower, and they air dry in his bedroom while he shows her remnants of a childhood she’s always glanced at from afar. There are books with old spines she deciphers, cocking her head to the side, pictures she seizes and compares with the current version of Stiles, older and taller and more haunted, perhaps, but also more grounded. She finds an old scrabble box and tells him about the games she’d have against herself in primary school. 

He laughs and his eyes crinkle as they always do when he’s looking at her with particular fondness, and he asks _Couldn’t you have played with your parents?_ between two kisses. She sighs a _no_ , putting the box back on the shelf for later, _they didn’t speak Italian or German or Portuguese_ —

She trails off just so he can interrupt her with a kiss, his rumbling laughter filling the air between them. He breaks it off when it becomes apparent they’re both hungry. Lydia finds herself reaching for his lips in vain; he keeps them out of her reach just by standing straight.

He pokes her side until she agrees to get dressed and head back outside for pie, and she steps back in her skirt, missing nearly immediately the way the wind feels against her naked skin. Because he’s forcing her to get dressed again, she decides to forgo her own blouse for one of Stiles’ plaid shirts. It’s green and white, and when she knots the extremities as high as she can in her best attempt at a crop top, it’s also deliciously light in the breezy air.

 _My clothes look really good on you_ , Stiles says after staring at her for a whole minute in a way that Lydia can finally acknowledge. The sheepish way with which he says the slightly arrogant words make her grin, and she tugs him down for a quick kiss. She purrs her assent— _I know_ , maybe, or _do they?_ , a fake question to a real answer—against his lips and smoothes down the fabric of his shirt where she’s just seized him. 

They race down the stairs like kids and welcome the cool breeze brought by the early evening as the world slowly keeps spinning, a study in blues and greys and black and white.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **57:** “I see the way you look at me when you think I don’t notice.”

By the time she reaches third grade, Lydia is used to attention.

All kind of attention, really: from the teachers, a surprised amazement whenever she draws the curtain the tiniest bit open on her abilities; from her peers, furtive glances and tugs on her braid. 

(Those stop very soon. 

_It’s reflexes_ , Lydia says around an innocent smile when the teachers pull her away from the boy’s hunched form. _Like at the doctor’s_. The adults claim that pulling on her hair does not warrant a kick in the groin, but Lydia disagrees. 

She learns, though, because that’s what she does best, and she rarely uses physical strength anymore. She prefers the slow decomposition on her classmates’ faces as she tear apart their secrets and their hopes, and she learns to hold her head high against the muttered insults.) 

She gets golden stars and smiley stickers on her assignments, smiles and pats on the head, candy and flowers and invitations to sleepovers. She keeps the homework and puts it away in a heavy binder, throws away the flowers and distributes the candy around her. 

“Don’t let anyone disrespect you,” her father tells her one day. “Learn their game if you don’t know how to play, and win until they forget you didn’t invent it.”

Lydia thinks her father is ruthless and almighty, that he leaves for work every morning and comes back, winning in everything.

It changes when she stays up reading late enough at night to hear the angry whispers and the dishes slammed on the shelves a bit too hard. She buckles up in the front seat of the car and watches her mother keep her head up, her eyes straight ahead on the road. Moments with her father become rarer and shorter, moments of lack of communication and understanding when Lydia pushes him to see where he’ll go before he bounces back. He doesn’t, she discovers; he jumps around her need of affection with presents and money and “don’t tell your mother”s.

She deems him worthless of her time and pretends it doesn’t hurt when he doesn’t fight for her. 

She decides to fight for herself, instead, and sets on winning. 

Lydia has a plan by the time she reaches sixth grade, one that will take her where she needs with minimal losses. It doesn’t include long-lasting friends or recognition from the teachers, well-meaning and useless, but it does include Jackson, fashion magazines, and the sound of the doorbell ringing incessantly on her eleventh birthday party.

It certainly does _not_ include Stiles Stilinski. 

She pretends he doesn’t exist, and walks noisily down the hallway when he calls hello from his locker, so that the clatter of her heels drown the sound of his voice, and she doesn’t have to soothe the uncomfortable feeling on her skin afterwards. 

She pretends she doesn’t know him, and actively tries to forget the smoothness of the card the class signed in the third grade, when he missed classes for a week after his mother’s death. 

She tries to forget the sharp inhale her mother took when she learnt the news, and focuses on the hard disgust boiling in her veins, the hatred for the suburban and small-town life she lives, where it’s possible for Lydia Martin and Stiles Stilinski to coexist in the same sentence, simply because their mothers were friends, once upon a time.

In sixth grade, he sends a card to her home for her birthday. She takes in the nervous handwriting on the envelope, picks up a red marker and stuffs the card back in the mailbox, with a ruthless “return to sender” scribbled over her own address. 

She doesn’t glance at him when she walks past him in the cafeteria, but she feels his eyes on her, heavy and full of something that concerns her. She makes sure to whack him in the back of the head with her bag, and jiggles the silverware on her tray to drown sound of his water spilling over the table, his own choking coughs and the smacks of his friend thumping him on the back. 

He watches her. From afar, and in a way that might have been flattering, had it come from anyone else (Jackson, she wants to Jackson to look at her with those serious eyes), but is actually rather pathetic.

She ignores him and he steps out of her way before she even knows she’s going to take that turn. She humiliates him and he retreats, rendered speechless for once, but his eyes follow her as she leaves, and she wants to squash the disappointment she sees in them. 

What does he expect? She asks herself one day, as she stands at her locker like on a stage, chewing down one of the junior league lacrosse player for putting his hand on her ass uninvited. Does he think he’s special because he chooses to ignore her awful ways? Maybe he’s truly as bad as she is, she thinks as she catches the small smile playing on his lips, and he gets off from her rudeness without recognizing it for what it is. 

That night she opens her notebook to a new page and there, next to the perfect equations she completes in secret, she writes a letter to Stiles Stilinski. 

_I will only write this once_ , she traces carefully on the paper, _and it’s in Russian because I’m smarter than you are_. 

_You look at me too closely_ , appears next as she takes a moment to reflect on the correct conjugation of the verb. _I see it, you know, the way you look at me when you think I don’t notice. I would have to be blind to miss it, really. Why don’t you stop?_

_Everybody makes fun of you because of it, and do you know how tiring it is to stop that wave from reaching me? Jackson pushes you into the bleachers the other day because you were talking about my hair. Don’t you get it, Stilinski? Keep away from my life and to your pathetic one. Shoo._

The tip of the pencil breaks; the small shards leave a long smudge when she brushes them off. 

She stares a moment at the irregular letters and the disharmony of the last word, scribbled in English like a band-aid on a knife wound, and it sets something off in her. The paper hurts her fingers when she tries to tear it up, so she crunches it up and lobs it in the bin, buried at several inches of trash.

Her phone buzzes next to her elbow, blinking to life with a text from Jackson. 

_wyd bb?_

_Practicing Russian_ , she writes and deletes, her fingers heavier than usual on the keyboard. She doesn’t send it, of course--she never does

.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **63:** “I think there’s someone in the house.”

Lydia wakes up in the middle of the night with a full-body jerk, disoriented and out of breath. It takes a long moment to remember where she is, taking in the dark and familiar outline of the room. The window on her left lets in thin rays of yellow light from the streetlamp, streaking the door of the closet like gold on white paint.

She fumbles with the covers, feeling nauseous and on edge, like she’s going to throw up or break out in hives at the same time, and she jumps at an unexpected weight next to her leg. 

A small paw presses on her knee, a small tongue darts out to lick at her hand, and Lydia clenches her fingers in the short hairs on Cobalt’s neck.

“Oh my God,” she whispers, angling her face in the dog’s neck, “you scared me half to death.”

She gets a lick on the ear for her trouble, and she spends several moments after that trying to regulate the feeling of dread that’s climbing up her gut and the pounding in her head. She thinks she’s almost there when she hears a loud creaking, and she flinches so hard that Cobalt falls back on the bed and makes his way to Stiles.

“Wasszat?” Stiles mumbles a moment later. Then, a bit strangled, with the patient exasperation that comes with the force of habit: “Ugh, that’s my throat, you stupid dog—” 

The sheets rustle as Stiles tries to wrestle Cobalt on a part of the blanket that doesn’t cover his own body. Lydia registers it distantly, the same way she knows Stiles is turning on his stomach and hugging his pillow closer to his chest; out of habit rather than direct witnessing. She sits very still until she feels Stiles’ reaching for her. His arm hit her hip first, and she can nearly see him frowning at finding her awake. 

“Lydia?” he asks, sounding definitely more awake. 

She can hear him sit up. She tangles her fingers with his where they lie on her leg and squeezes hard. 

“Nightmare?” he says in a low voice, like he knows better than to disturb the night. 

She feels panic flare up in her stomach at the sound of that, and blood thumps in her ears like heavy footsteps. She shakes her head, and says, a second too late: 

“No. But…” 

She trails off and tries to make something out of the feeling that hasn’t been familiar in years. Now that she has identified it, she can’t help but feeling it: that strange weight in her throat, half an itch and half a choking hand, pressed hard against her vocal cords. 

_Banshee_ , the pounding in her head seems to say, and it’s a word that Lydia thought, naively, that she left behind in her youth; it’s an unwanted tag she was sure only applied to a determined twenty-year-old. 

Lydia Martin is a determined forty-three years old woman with a PhD under her belt, a husband who cries with her when they watch _The Notebook_ , and a dog named after a case of the periodic table hung on the wall. 

Stiles stretches out over her to turn on the light from her bedside table, and they both blink violently. 

“Hey,” Stiles says, using his position to fold her up against his chest, “what’s wrong? You’re shaking.”

She presses her nose in the soft cotton of his shirt, searching for the familiar scent of laundry detergent she’s learned to associate with him and stability. She doesn’t find it, and that’s when she knows it’s not something she can just ignore or take her time figuring out.

She takes in the smell of rain and honey-scented wood polish, the heavy steps still pounding in her head and the faint voices from a television turned on very far away. 

“I think there’s someone in the house,” she says near his ear, so she’s sure she doesn’t have to say it again. She’s not sure how long she can speak without letting out the scream eating out at her throat. 

Stiles freezes under her, and the hand that was running through her hair in soothing gestures stills as well. 

“Our house?” He asks in a low voice, and Lydia knows without looking that he’s scanning the bedroom, assessing the time and how long they’ve been awake. 

She shakes her head because she doesn’t trust her voice and claps a hand on her mouth like she’s going to throw up, pulling away. Stiles starts to say something but the pounding in her head—heavy boots on rain-slick wooden steps, loud and loud and _loud_ —becomes simply too much; for one blinding second, she can’t breathe through it. 

Her hand falls down and she screams. 

Her throat burns when it’s over, and Lydia’s surprised to find herself standing up. The pounding in her head has stopped, the smell of asphalt under the rain has faded away and there’s no one in the room other than themselves and the weary knowledge that they have never escaped Beacon Hills in the past twenty-five years.

Stiles is half-kneeling on the bed, one foot on the floor like he’s ready to bolt. He lifts his phone without looking away from her. 

“Do you know who?” 

“I don’t even know _where_ ,” Lydia says with a voice she forces not to quiver. “It’s too late anyway.”

He puts down the phone. 

“Then come on.”

Lydia puts on her robe and they make their way downstairs, turning on all the lights on their way as though the danger in Lydia’s head can seep out from someone else’s home to their own. Cobalt barks once at the back door to be let out and Lydia mechanically turns the knob. 

When she comes back to the kitchen island, Stiles is half-turned toward the microwave and on the phone.

“... like, five minutes ago,” he’s saying to Scott in a low voice, almost like he doesn’t want her to know just how bad the situation is.

Lydia thinks it’s a bit useless, because she’s well-accustomed with failure at that point in her life, and she carries that reminder with her every time her migraines start. 

It’s too late; it’s _always_ too late. The clock on the oven turns to four am, as if it agrees.

“No, we—we’re not sure,” Stiles says after a beat. 

The microwave beeps and Lydia brushes past Stiles to take out the two mugs. 

“We don’t know,” she corrects him, and she knows Scott can hear her, even though her voice is still hoarse from screaming. She feels Stiles’ hand settle on her back when she hands him his cocoa. “We have no idea and we’re useless.” 

“I’ll be here in five,” she hears Scott saying against Stiles’ ear, and that’s that. 

They sit down and wait. At one point, Cobalt barks once to be let in, and Stiles gets up without his usual mock-complains. He takes Lydia’s hand when he sits back down and doesn’t let go, tracing shapeless patterns on her skin with his thumb. It’s soothing to her frayed nerves and she knows it is for his too, and when Scott lets himself in with his key ten minutes later, she finds her voice strong enough not to give in when she sighs, “It was supposed to be over.”

“Your powers weren’t caused by the Nemeton, though, Lydia,” Scott reminds her in his gentle voice like she did the pack twenty-two years ago. “There was no guarantee they were going to stop after we destroyed its power.”

“We could hope,” Stiles mutters. “It worked for twenty-two years, didn’t it?”

He hands Scott a cup of coffee and they all sit down to drink and watch each other in silence. It’s such a far cry from their high school years—always in movement, always in a group, a pack that stopped being necessary to survival years ago—, that Lydia is thrown away for a short moment.

It’s just the three of them, now, because Scott’s two daughters and his wife have never fully been a part of _this_ , and Lydia hopes they never do. It’s lonely, being useless with the memory of everything you used to be able to accomplish. 

Scott leaves an hour later, after they’ve discussed everything they can do (nothing) and everything they’ll be able to do once the sun rises (nothing). 

Stiles and Lydia curl up on the couch in front of the bay window and watch the sky lighten with every passing minute. Lydia lies down between his legs and drags the throw on them, burying her feet under Cobalt’s warm belly. 

“I hate it,” she says after a long time. “I thought it was over when we took down that tree.”

Stiles lays his chin on top of her head and tugs her closer. She closes her eyes and lets him comfort her, losing herself in the solid familiarity of the moment.

“I know,” he says. Then: “I’m sorry.”

He has nothing to apologize for, if only being as useless as her, but she lets the words ward off some of the death that clings to her.

“Hey,” Stiles says after a long moment, when the sun starts rising and the grieving silence has become a sleepy quietness. “Did I ever tell you about that pet boa I had?”

He has, of course he has. Lydia doesn’t think there’s any story before their high school years that they don’t know. But she takes the offering as what it is and turns her head to look up at him.

“This just spells disaster,” she says, petting Cobalt when he comes up to her and lies down on her chest. 

“Hey, now. No making fun of me _before_ the story.”

“You’re right. I’ll have enough ammunition when it’s over. Please, go on.”

He pokes her side until she smiles against his arm, and begins, as she knows he would, with: 

“Well, Scott and I—”

Lydia twists her wedding ring around her finger. Stiles’ words seem to spell out a whole other story: one that is Scott, but mainly Stiles and Lydia, who’ve become Stiles-and-Lydia in more than one household. 

It’s a good feeling; it won’t stop the world from spinning on, but then again, nothing can. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **39** : “This is very cliché.” + **69:** “You’re ticklish.” + **21:** “God, I missed you.”

The car starts clicking and creaking on the last half hour of their trip. Lydia feels it in the wheel first, then in the rigid steering, and when Stiles finally cuts off the music to ask “What's that noise?”, Lydia knows there's a problem. 

“Pull over,” Stiles says after the engine gives a sudden whirr, one wheel in a pothole.

Lydia complies, because even though the rented Mercedes is much newer and all around better than his old Jeep, the antic car did give Stiles more experience with faulty engines. 

“Do you know what's happening?” she asks, pulling on the side of the road. 

Once the car is still, the lateness of the hour catches up with her, and she feels a twinge of irritation toward Beacon Hills. They're barely in Beacon Hills _county_ and so of course their car--their _rental_ , _brand-new_ car has to stop working in the middle of the woods on a Sunday night. 

Stiles shakes his head before stepping out of the car. Lydia pops up the hood when he gestures her to, and stands a moment bent over it, hidden from Lydia's sight by the sheet of black metal. 

She waits for five, ten minutes without hearing a sound before she unbuckles and opens her door. 

“You okay?” she asks as soon as she's outside, and the wind carries out her words. 

She watches the leaves rustle around her heeled boots, and a spike of panic seizes her for a hot second. It's senior year all over again, and Beacon Hills is swept over by a cold wind that blows in the supernatural; she finds herself focusing on the distance, waiting for the tell-tale sound of hooves. 

She can't see Stiles over the hood, and she knows he could be gone in the blink of an eye--

Then Stiles slams the hood down and turns to her, blinking in the harsh lights of the car. 

“You okay?” he says in a soft voice, like he knows what she's thinking about. 

How can he, when Lydia herself isn't sure what transpires in her brain in those times? But Stiles has always been too perceptive when it comes to her, and that's how that particular story begins. 

Lydia sits back sideways in the car, legs outstretched toward him, and gently bumps her right foot to his shin. 

“Better than this engine,” she says, regaining her composure and hard-won casualness. “What's the matter?”

Stiles scowls. 

“I’m not sure,” he admits. “The engine is so different from the Jeep’s--I couldn't see anything.”

“You mean no duct tape?”

“Very funny.”

There's a loud rumbling sound in the distance and Stiles squints at it before making his way to the passenger seat. Lydia catches on and close her door the moment the rain starts to fall furiously. 

“I missed those north Californian downpours,” Lydia says darkly, watching the drops of rain smash against the windshield like pebbles. 

“Makes you regret the East Coast winters.”

“I wouldn't go that far.”

They don't turn on the heat, not wanting to add a dead battery to the damage, and Stiles reaches for the heavy winter coats they shed when they landed in California. Lydia slips into hers, grateful for the warmth and the smoothness of the fleece lining, and reaches for her phone. The line is busy the first time she dials the still familiar number of Beacon Hills’ towing company, and she looks at her phone in distaste after five minutes of Vivaldi’s _Spring_ concerto. 

“The odds of someone else crashing their car tonight?”

Stiles makes a disgusted noise and makes himself comfortable in the seat. 

“We should call them with my phone next time,” he says. “They must still have my number in their VIP clients book.”

The truth is, Lydia wouldn't be surprised if it was true. She slips off her shoes and turns in her seat to face him. The window is cool against her back, and she tucks her socked feet against the armrest between them. 

“Home sweet home,” she sighs. “Lost in the woods at night in a broken down car. It's high school all over again.”

Stiles’ eyes take on a different kind of mischievous light. 

“You know what else we did in the car in high school?” he says playfully, grabbing her ankles to extend her legs over his lap. His fingers slip up the hem of her pants and ghost over her ankles and Lydia feels her toes curl up against his thigh. 

“Stop it,” she says, biting her lips to contain her giggles. 

“You’re ticklish,” Stiles realizes, his mouth already stretched wide. “How did I never know?”

She kicks at his wrists until he lets go of her ankles. 

“Try again,” she says, pointing at his phone. “I’m not having car sex with you when we should be at your father's for dinner.”

“So you'll have car sex with me _after_ we get dinner with my father?”

“I will consider--” Lydia pauses, enjoying the way Stiles’ lips part unconsciously. “Making out on your bed.”

Stiles snorts. 

“You really are reliving our teenage years,” he says, like they're not barely twenty and still in college. 

Lydia waves the phone under his nose until he gives in and calls again. This time they pick up immediately, and Lydia isn't surprised when she hears Stiles greet the other person by his name. 

“Ah, no,” he says after a few minutes. “We rented a car at the airport. No, I left the Jeep to my friend Scott--the one with the Kawasaki bike?” He glances at Lydia when she nudges her with her foot, tapping on her wrist with two fingers, the universal sign for “hurry up”. 

“An accident,” he repeats after giving their location. “Of course. How long?”

He hangs up soon after and places the phone in the cup holder between their seats. 

“An accident?” Lydia asks. 

“Yup. Three car pile-up. They're nearly done, but we’ll have to wait for the tow truck for at least forty minutes.”

The wind picks up at that moment, rocking the car slightly. Lydia and Stiles stare, unimpressed, as a branch hits the window heavily. 

“This is very cliché,” Lydia says, trying to see something in the darkness. 

Stiles hums and picks up his phone, his fingers quick across the screen as he types a message. 

“Dad can’t pick us up, he’s covering the accident.” A groan. “Fuck. I'm _starving_.”

They spend ten minutes in silence, three others playing _I spy_ until they run out of things to spy (the rain, trees, the road), and by then Lydia is so cold and bored that she's starting to imagine things out of the dark shape of the trees. Stiles’ rhythmic drumming on the dashboard is also slowly driving her mad. 

_Tap tap tap_ , and Lydia’s seeing something move between the trees; reason tells her it’s the wind, branches and bushes bent backward by the storm, but experience is pressing down on her until she fears like she’s been conditioned to.

 _Tap tap tap_. A bird swoops down suddenly, hits their car, and Lydia jumps half a foot in the air. It rights itself as it bounces back and disappears in the storm. 

“Weird,” Stiles notices. “Birds usually don’t fly out during storms.”

They share a look; even though they both live in the city, now, noticing out-of-place animal behaviors has become a second nature. 

“Scott hasn’t mentioned anything weird happening lately, right?” Lydia ends up asking, just to break the silence. She turns in her seat to look out the back window, but there’s nothing to see except for dark trees and a darker sky.

“Not to _me_ ,” Stiles answers.

The reproach is clear in his voice. Even months later he’s still annoyed that they never called him when rats and wolves and people started killing each other, Lydia guesses. She reaches for his hand and squeezes a silent apology. Stiles’ phone buzzes with an incoming text at that moment, and when he brings up her wrist to his lips, leaving the ghost of a kiss on her pulse point, his attention is clearly elsewhere. 

He doesn’t release her hand the whole time he frowns at his phone, but Lydia looks at him and feels like someone put her heart in the wringer and chose the highest settings; it turns and turns in her chest until she feels like she’s going to bleed for this boy sitting two feet away from her, like her love for him seeps in her blood and warms her fingers between his.

She turns her hand until they’re holding hands and laces her fingers through his. It’s a small but steady comfort, a gesture made dearer by the distance that they’ve grown accustomed to. 

“God,” Stiles says, like he’s thinking the same thing. “I missed you.” 

“I missed you too,” Lydia admits. “So _much_ , Stiles.”

It’s nothing she hasn’t already thought or heard, because long distance is hard, especially when isolation, to Lydia in high school, meant driving less than an hour north to her lakehouse.

She tugs him to her with their connected hands and he falls against her shins. 

“I’m sorry about Thanksgiving,” she says in his mouth when he leans forward to kiss her. “I wanted to come home--”

“It’s okay,” he reminds her, his nose brushing against her cheek. “I know that project was important.”

There’s something in his words that makes frown and lean back to look at him in the eyes.

“Not _more_ important, though, you know that, right?” 

His eyes are impossibly soft and fond; there’s her answer. It makes her feel safe that she can read him so easily before he can even speak, because if Stiles Stilinski is good with his words, he tells even more with his eyes and his hands and his actions. And now--now she has a lifetime in front of her to read each movement, his half-aborted nervous gestures and gentle looks. 

Some part of her hates the lateness of the hour and the uncomfortable knowledge that the tow truck is coming, because a revelation like that deserves the shallow darkness of a bedroom at night or the casual familiarity of _home_. 

“Say it again,” Stiles asks, so Lydia does just that until the lights from the tow truck break the illusion of solitude. 

The air is still thick with those words when they step outside the car and Lydia is nearly swept off her feet by the wind, because they’re still there in the way she reaches for him when he stumbles and the weight of his hand on her back when she climbs inside the truck: _You’re the most important person in my life, Stiles Stilinski_. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **99:** “Calm down. I look a lot worse than I am.”

When Stiles doesn’t answer her texts all day, Lydia knows something’s happened. The ache in her stomach is pure human worry, not a banshee premonition, but it’s still a too familiar emotion.

She texts him before going to class, and he doesn’t answer. She sends him a snapchat of her disgruntled expression when someone says something stupid and scientifically untrue (can she ever escape morons? she wonders, but she knows the answer to that one) and when she checks two hours later, he hasn’t opened it yet. 

She texts him again later in the evening, a whole five hours after her first message, and starts to feel uneasy when the read notification doesn’t turn on. 

When she texts Scott “ _has the idiot who passes as your best friend answered your texts all day?”_ and gets a brief “ _I'll tell him to call you_ ” that solves nothing and means a lot, she's annoyed and unimpressed. There's nothing else for a few long minutes that slowly turn into hours, so Lydia, turning to her usual solace and distraction, takes out her textbooks. 

By the time she’s done with her homework, has washed her hair and curled up on her bed, her favorite blanket spread over her legs, she has one finger poised above the call button. 

Which is why the buzzing of her phone startles her so much. 

“Stiles,” she says when the dark material of a bunched up shirt comes into focus on the screen. She wastes a second wondering why he’s keeping himself partly out of frame before she knows something’s wrong.

“Hey,” he says, but his voice is thick and a bit hesitant. “Um. Are you free?”

“I’m home. What’s the problem?”

“Who says there’s a problem?”

This is definitely the rushed tone he gets when he tries to lie to her, so she keeps silent and wishes he could see her glaring at him. 

“Stiles,” she says after a bit, when he appears as eager to play the silent game as she is--another sign that clues her in. 

“Lydia.”

“Don’t play with me,” she warns, her temper rising. “You’re the one who got in trouble, not me.”

It’s a sign of how well Lydia knows him that she can read the tension in his shoulders when she’s only seeing half on one. 

“Show me your face,” she insists. “This whole thing is stupid, Stiles, I hope you realize that.”

“Okay,” he agrees. “But don’t freak out.”

“That’s not helping,” she starts to say before he angles his phone so his face replaces his chest on the screen, and it’s both worse and an improvement.

Lydia doesn’t want to look at them, but she forces herself to take in every bruise that paint his face red and purple. Her stomach ties itself into knots when she sees the swelling of his left eye and the cuts above his eyebrow. He turns the phone slightly when she gestures him to and exposes the bump on his temple more clearly. Taking a deep breath to loosen the knot in her stomach, she lets the detached part of her mind rank his injuries from most to least serious. All of them are clean and visibly treated, even the large patch of scratched skin on his cheek and jaw, so she doesn’t say anything. Her pinched brows must speak for her, though, because Stiles is the first to talk.

“I look a lot worse than I am,” he tells her, voice gravelly. 

“A _lot_ worse?”

“Just worse,” he concedes. 

It’s not that Lydia doesn’t trust him or thinks him immature and irresponsible, but she’s seen him injured too many times to count, helpless and bloody and still needing to carry on. She wishes she didn’t have to look at that one reminder of the violence of their lives, now that they’ve lived with the illusion of safety, that only distance can bring, for several months. 

“You look…” she trails off. Injured, he looks injured and hurt, and she hates it so furiously that she thinks she might combust. 

“like a worse version of my basement encounter with Gerard?” He says, holding up an ice pack to the side of his head. “Yeah, I know.” 

“Did you go to the hospital?”

“Yeah. I came back like half an hour ago. I don't have a concussion, and they gave me mild painkillers, so I’m okay.”

“You didn't need stitches,” she notices, touching her own brow where he's been cut. “Did you tell Scott?”

“When I was in the hospital.”

“You didn't call me.”

“I didn't want to worry you more than needed, so I waited.”

She's still worried, but the hot flares of panic are gone, replaced by the dull certainty to that someone she loves has been hurt, once again. It's best he waited, they both know. Lydia sighs heavily and leans back on her pillows.

“What happened?”

Stiles hesitates.

“There was a fight,” he starts slowly.

“You were in a _fight_?”

In all her years of knowing Stiles--and, even without counting the years when she pretended _not_ to know him, that’s a lot--, she’s never seen him in an actual fistfight. Fight to stay alive, yes; punch someone else and be punched in return, _no_. 

“I helped end a fight,” he corrects. 

“You didn’t do a very good job.”

“It was a big fight?”

“Lots of lost punches, then,” Lydia says pointedly. 

“You should see the other guys.” He frowns. “Well, no. They’re assholes.”

“You’re an idiot,” Lydia informs him seriously. 

“I know. I’m sorry. I promise I’ll try to stay away from trouble?”

“Maybe you could try not to make it sound like a question, first.” 

He smiles cheekily at her under his bruises, a real Stiles-like smile that settles her. 

“Don't do that again,” she tells him, and she knows he hears all her worry in her tone. It doesn't matter; he knows it already. “And answer your phone anyway, next time.”

“I lost it in the shuffle.” The image on the screen jumps, as if Stiles is showing his point to her. “Obviously Alex found it.”

“Your roommate has more common sense than you, it seems.”

“Story of my life.”

Lydia laughs when he does, and the conversation takes a lighter turn. They hang up when she can't stifle her yawns anymore, but she’s still smiling around her toothbrush. 

She’s still bothered and the tiniest bit annoyed by Stiles’ story, but it’s something she can sleep with; like a nightmare that ends when she wakes up. 

Stiles sends her a picture of himself, holding a red and purple plaid shirt next to his head that matches the coloring of his face, and she laughs, sitting up in her small bed, some four hundred miles away.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **03:** “I almost lost you.” + **10:** “You should’ve told me.”

Stiles knows that Lydia hasn’t been sleeping well.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out; Lydia’s skilled with her makeup brush, but Stiles has been a restless sleeper for too long not to recognize the signs in someone else. There are the bags under her eyes, sure, but also the way her hair lacks its usual shine and volume, and how she leans against walls, lockers, and tables every time they stay standing for a while.

He doesn’t know for sure what keeps her awake at night: nightmares, or pain. It takes a couple of weeks before she stops brushing her hair in a side braid, and even then, she keeps a scar on the pale skin of her throat.

Stiles knows how long Eichen House’s shadow can live in someone’s head, though, and he’s not surprised the hole in the side of her head heals long before her thoughts do.

It’s winter and the nights in Beacon Hills are too dark, too long. It’s a weather that ushers people at home, so Stiles spends most of his time roaming the empty streets in his old leaking Jeep with stuttering heating.

He’s taken to keeping a big blanket in the back, and spends hours huddled in his seat, keeping hourly contact with his father through his phone to avoid his eyes, his words, and his comforting presence. The deep wound in his left shoulder, left by a shard of glass that had no business being so _big_ , takes its sweet time healing, but the pain gives the illusion of warmth and, anyway, it disappears long before the usual cocktail of anxiety, paranoia, and guilt does.

One night, he sees a car pull over behind his, and it chases away any trace of restless sleep in his brain. The lights blind him, which is enough to make him go still--when did such a random fact become associated with threat? The parking lot is empty, it’s late at night, no one is around, and what’s that _noise_?

“Your father said I’d find you here,” Lydia says, wrenching the door open.

His heart starts beating a different rhythm.

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“Is it a question or an affirmation?” she asks drily.

Stiles says nothing. There’s nothing left for him to say, really, except nod blankly when Lydia asks if she can come in. He stares at her jumping in his car--she’s always been too small to step in normally--, trying to reconcile what he knows and he sees happening.

Lydia Martin, sitting in his car on a Tuesday evening in the empty parking lot of Beacon Hills’ ice rink. Lydia Martin, the girl he’s been in love with since he was eight; the friend he’s gained and lost because it hurt too much to look at her in the eyes and feel the guilt gnawing at him. The small body he held in his arms, shivering, on the cold metal of an operation table while she screamed her life away.

“Is that a blanket?” she says at the same time he asks, “what are doing here?”

He spread the blanket over the console until it covers her legs, tumbling down to the floor. She tugs it to her chin, hiding her arms under it like a small bird on a tree.

“I told you. I couldn’t sleep so I called your house, but your father told me you were out.”

“How does _he_ know where I am?”

“He gave order to all the patrol cars to report if they saw you.”

Stiles wants to protest--he’s not a child, he’s doing nothing dangerous, what an invasion of his privacy--but at the same time, Lydia’s in his car because she _seeked_ his company. She looks beautiful and tired under the harsh lights of the ice rink, so Stiles says, “Wanna drive around?”, and starts the car with a cough of the engine.

* * *

 

He can’t say it becomes a tradition for Lydia to hunt him down in the middle of the night, because he believes in luck and jinxing it, but she does spend more time in his passenger seat than she has in a long time.

Neither of them bring it up during the day, but as always with dark nights and late hours, those moments stolen from sleep feel much more real than the monotony of classes and lacrosse practice.

Maybe Stiles is ready to graduate.

One night as they stopped in front of the pool (“Remember when I found that body and I called 911 before you?” Lydia asks with a small smile, because that’s a thing, now, laughing about the past like it’s just all a huge joke and they’re still waiting for the punchline), he pointedly doesn’t look at her and says:

“You never asked what happened to Donovan.”

“He’s dead,” she says.

“I killed him.”

There’s a pause, a silence that doesn’t seem to end. Stiles risks a glance to his right and finds Lydia looking at him with huge eyes. He wonders if he’s imagining the wariness of her gaze, heavier than sleeplessness.

“Scott told you,” he guesses. She nods. “I should have--I should have told you, not him.”

He doesn’t know why he says it; it doesn’t change anything to the fact, and he doesn’t owe her more than his friendship, especially not more of the burden that comes with the lives they have, the knowledge they hide.

Lydia says, “I killed Valack. I blew his head off--literally. I can still see his _brain_ , Stiles.”

She sounds small and tired, so much that Stiles grabs her hand before he can think about it. She squeezes his fingers, maybe unconsciously, maybe as a _thank you_ , maybe to give herself strength. He hopes it’s the latter. He wants to see Lydia strong, always, but he also wants her to trust him with her moments of weakness. He knows he lost that right sometimes during the last year, but he also thinks that maybe she’s letting him earn it back.

“And now I can’t sleep either,” Lydia concludes with a small wet laugh. It’s anything but funny. “What a pair we make.”

Regardless of maturity, hearing Lydia refer to them as a pair sends a small thrill to his core.

“He was killing _you_ , Lydia. He wasn’t just _going_ to, he was in the middle of it. And I almost lost you,” he says, heart pounding through what feels like a confession far too heavy. “So many times, Lydia, I--”

He loses his courage at the last moment. What kind of friend declares his feelings just after confession murder? A psychopath, maybe. The thought is enough to kindle the need of light and life. It’s too dark, too empty, too quiet around them.

Stiles gets goosebumps under his flannel from the weight of Lydia’s stare, but he doesn’t allow himself to turn his head as he drives down the calm streets. He doesn’t want to tell her what he thinks; he doesn’t know where to start, where to end, what tone to take. He’s earning back her friendship, one night at a time.

He drives her home and watches her walk up to her house, starting the car only after she glances behind her and waves at him goodbye. The door closes softly; he makes it home five minutes later and sleeps until noon.

The next time, he calls her before she leaves her house, and tells her: “You’ll never guess what I just saw. Dress up, Martin, we’re going to investigate.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **80:** “Are you happy?”

It’s the woman distributing flyers out of Lydia’s favorite coffee shop who asks her the question. 

Lydia is just getting out of the small, crowded room with a piping hot seasonal drink in hand when a flash of blue makes her stop, blinking and leaning away from the paper shoved in her face.

“Fortune telling and psychic help,” the woman with the flyers says, her voice still firm and asserted. She was already there when Lydia walked by on her way to lunch, hours ago. With the night having fallen hours ago and the rush of people getting home after the day, Lydia is surprised she doesn’t sound more exhausted.

“No thank you,” she says, trying to sidestep the arm blocking her way without jostling her coffee or the people on the sidewalk.

“The Great Calla can tell you anything you want to know about your future,” the woman insists. “Romantic relationships, money, work--”

Lydia raises an eyebrow.

“I don’t really need help or advice for those,” she says, slightly amused. 

She doesn’t tell the woman that she doesn’t believe in magic or seeing the future: ten years ago, she would have, maybe, but it seems hypocritical to shut down this branch of esoterics when she’s described herself as a harbinger of death more than once.

“Ah,” the woman says with her deep voice, “perfect life, yes?”

Lydia hums and takes a sip of her coffee. “I would say so.”

“Then I will ask you a question, and you need to answer frankly--”

“Ask away,” Lydia says, though she is ignored, “I’m leaving.”

“Are you happy?”

It’s not the question Lydia was waiting for, which is maybe more telling of Lydia’s state of mind than the woman’s, because in a way it’s a logical follow-up. People consult psychics when they’re afraid, or insecure, or trying to prove to themselves that there is nothing out there because it’s all bullshit: it makes sense that appealing to these feelings would bring in new clients.

“I don’t think I need anyone else to answer that question for me,” Lydia says. “Good evening.”

Her heels clack on the wet pavement when she makes her way down the street, letting the warmth of her drink battle the cold November air. It’s been raining melted snow all day now, and Lydia can’t wait for the real snow to fall, because Stiles has been complaining for two days that they’re being cheated. He insists on loving snow before it falls, then grumbles when the sidewalk transform into brown mush and everything feels wet, even the inside of his shoes. 

Lydia privately thinks they’re going to have a real snowfall this evening, despite what the weather channel says, because she knows how to read the sky and the atmosphere. It almost _smells_ like snow. 

The first snowflakes are landing on the thick wool of her winter hat when she steps inside their building, and Lydia can’t help but crow internally.

“Maybe I should be a psychic,” she thinks out loud, stepping out of her shoes.

“You’d make an amazing psychic,” Stiles says. “But you’d get frustrated with dealing with all those gullible idiots who wants to know the winning numbers for the lottery and you’d quit after a few years. Hi.”

“Hey.” She raises herself on her tiptoes to kiss him, landing an off-center kiss half on his mouth. “Would I make a lot of money?”

“Tons,” Stiles says, putting her bag aside so she can shrug off her coat, “and you’d have so many famous clients that people would mourn your disappearance from the psychic scene.”

“It’d have to be very dramatic.”

“You could fake your death,” Stiles suggests.

“I’m pretty sure that’s illegal. Don’t you work for the FBI?”

Stiles shrugs. “I was stealing and reproducing my dad’s sheriff keycards when I was fourteen. Once a criminal, always a criminal.”

“You rebel.”

“That’s me,” Stiles says, laughing and bending down to kiss her again, properly. “Hey, you’re never gonna believe what Carson said to me today--”

Lydia follows him into the kitchen, pouring drinks as Stiles turns back to the chopping board set on the counter. She steals bits of carrot when he turns to get a pot from the drawer, and he sends her a look over his shoulder when he hears the crunch.

“Don’t steal my dinner,” he says. He may be trying to sound stern, but his eyes spark the way they do when he’s looking at her before saying, _I love you_. Lydia leans forward and kisses him, slowly and surely, because she can. 

“I’m happy,” she tells him seriously, just to see that little crinkle of confusion in his brow. 

“I’m happy you’re happy.” 

“I know.”

“If I tell you I love you right now, will you consider the Star Wars roleplay you’ve never said yes to?”

“Ask me again after dinner,” Lydia says. 

“Wait, what?” Stiles almost drops his spoon on her foot, sputtering. “Seriously?”

“Mmmmm.” She deliberately checks him out with a slow glance, lingering on his nose and the shape of his arms in his green plaid. “Would I joke about that?”

“As a matter of fact, yeah,” Stiles says, still staring at her. “You’re a joker, Lydia Martin.” 

“That’s a well-known fact,” she deadpans, because her sense of humor is mostly limited to dry wit and sarcasm. “Alright,” she adds, fishing out her phone from her purse. “No actual roleplay--I don’t think we’re quite there yet--but I’m sure there are hair tutorials everywhere on Youtube.”

Stiles is still staring at her, mouth open on a small silent O. “We still have the Halloween costumes from two years ago,” he says. 

“The gown from Cloud City?”

He nods. Lydia jumps off her stool and pads to him with deliberation, crowding him against the counter as he leans down to keep eye contact. There’s a small clang when he half-throws the spoon on the countertop. 

“Would you fuck me with the dress on?” she almost purrs, her mouth brushing against his. His lips quirk up at the same time his hands, hot and familiar, come up to hold her hips. They disappear quickly under her untucked blouse and she feels the ghost of his fingers trailing up her stomach, leaving goosebumps in their wake. 

“I’d fuck you with a potato bag on,” he says, earnest and eager. Lydia bites her lip to hold off her laughter, knowing intimately that’s it’s _true_ , despite the hyperbolic words. 

Stiles is bending down to kiss her, probably spurred by the little indentations Lydia’s teeth left in her lipstick, when they’re interrupted by a clatter and a loud hiss. They turn toward the stove like one man just in time to see the pot overflow, dousing the hot burner with water. 

Stiles swears and steps away from her embrace long enough to turn off the heat and slide the pot to another unused burner. Lydia takes in the unopened pasta packet and the little piles of vegetables waiting on the chopping board, worrying her lip. She can feel Stiles follow her gaze and come to the same conclusion.

“I’m not that hungry,” she says.

“Fuck dinner,” Stiles agrees. 

“No, fuck _me_.”

“That can be arranged.”

“ _Good_.”

She lifts her arms at the same time he steps forward and hoists her up so that she can cross her legs around his hips.

“You’re beautiful,” he tells her as he starts to make his way to the bedroom, kissing her nose, then her cheeks and her forehead. Lydia tips her head so that he doesn’t have any other choice than kissing her. He complies, deeply and enthusiastically, and Lydia swallows a little cry when he trips and nearly slams them in the wall.

“Sorry,” he says. “You’re too distracting.”

“Just get us to the bed uninjured,” Lydia says. 

He does. Lydia laughs when he dumps her on top of the blankets, smothering the sound in his skin when he follows her down. _Are you happy?_ The question props up in her mind, but she sweeps it aside: she is, and she knows it, which is maybe the most important part. Even more, Stiles is, too, and that’s a shared knowledge that Lydia wouldn’t trade for anything else. 

Later, when she can think about it, she rolls over in his arms.

“I didn’t even do the braids,” she whispers against the skin of his neck. She doesn’t need to see him to know that he’s smiling. 

“Another time,” he promises. “I can wait.”

A part of Lydia doubts it, but she doesn’t say anything else until they drift off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr](http://youaretoosmart.tumblr.com/post/169304123475/prompt-80-stydia-i-love-your-writing-so-much)


End file.
